1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a suspension for supporting a flying type head slider with a head element such as a magnetic head element or an optical head element, to a head gimbal assembly (HGA) with the suspension, and to a disk drive apparatus with the HGA.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese patent publication Nos. 09128727 A2 and 09128728 A2 disclose a suspension used in a hard disk drive (HDD) apparatus and provided with a lead-conductor integrated flexure for mounting a magnetic head slider and a load beam. This lead-conductor integrated flexure is fabricated by forming integrally a thin-film lead conductor on a metal flexure. The lead-conductor integrated flexure is laser-welded to the load beam.
However, according to such suspension structure described in these Japanese patent publications, because the lead-conductor integrated flexure itself is expensive, it is impossible to reduce the manufacturing cost of the suspension and also the HGA.
Japanese patent publication No. 2002092834 A2 discloses a suspension provided with a low cost small flexure, a load beam laser-welded to the flexure, and a normal flexible printed circuit board (FPC) member used in typical electric components, adhered to the flexure and the load beam by a resin adhesive, without using the above-mentioned lead-conductor integrated flexure.
According to the suspension structure described in the latter Japanese patent publication, because both the flexure and the FPC member are low cost, the manufacturing cost of the suspension and the HGA can be greatly reduced. However, since it is necessary to fix the FPC member to the flexure and the load beam only by the resin adhesive, there occurs difficulty in spreading control of the resin adhesive. Also, because the magnetic head slider is mounted on the FPC member, it is difficult to ground the body of the slider.